Canadian HR leader advocates for mindfulness as study finds 10 minutes a day can shift well-being in two weeks
Martine Lamoureux is a big believer in the power of mindfulness. So, when the COVID-19 pandemic was starting up, the head of talent and culture at Ardene worked to embed mindfulness into the retail stores.
"As we were leading towards COVID, it was very obvious that emotion control and emotion management was not something natural in that new population," she says.
“We really had a responsibility to tackle that in a very nice way… it makes a huge difference.”
In considering the employee experience and the stress that workers go through day after day, there's a lot that HR doesn’t have control over, says Lamoureux.
“We're talking about traffic, mad customers, nice customers… the influx of merchandise, all of the tasks that need to be done," says Lamoureux. "But one thing we can do is to equip our employees to better manage those emotions."
The approach is built around providing tools for staff, so they can do a quick reset and get back into a more positive space, she says. "If you're below the line, let's recognize that you're below the line, understand the why — but here’s a toolbox so you can go back above the line."
And Lamoureux is convinced of the results: “I’m a real believer now, I do think that it can replace a lot of pills if you’re doing it correctly.”
Mindfulness: 10 minutes per day
Also passionate about mindfulness is David Klemanski, who recently was involved with a study looking at the use of an app-based approach.
Chief of the Division of Psychology and director of postdoctoral training at Harvard Psychiatry's Cambridge Health Alliance and a faculty member at Harvard Medical School, he came to mindfulness through clinical work with patients diagnosed with anxiety disorders and borderline personality disorder.
“I was just amazed that when we teach people how to use mindfulness properly — so not the pop concept of it, but the proper use of it — how effective it can be in terms of regulating emotions and learning to tolerate distress,” says Klemanski, highlighting the importance of controlling anxiety, instead of the other way around
Recently, he partnered with wellness platform Caravan Wellness to look at the question: Can a short, app-based practice improve people’s wellbeing?
Participants were assigned to one of three groups — mindfulness, physical movement or a wait-list control — and asked to use the app for 10 minutes a day over two weeks.
"We wanted to approximate what it might be like for someone to just download an app and try it," says Klemanski. "So, we gave them very little training."
The mindfulness condition included breath-awareness exercises, mindful walks, and body-based practices that could be done from a desk chair. The movement condition was closer to light stretching than cardiovascular exercise.
Within each condition, participants could choose from a menu of videos and audio tracks — some repeated the same session nearly every day; others varied their approach throughout.
The study included about 35 to 40 participants per condition and measured emotional state, stress, anxiety, quality of life, sleep, physical activity, and motivation at baseline, then tracked outcomes at one- and three-month intervals.
"A lot of app-based studies are around engagement," says Klemanski. "’Do people stick with our app? Do they use it?’ I think that's a good metric, but I don't think it's the only one.”
Improvements in wellbeing
Both active groups reported improvements in well-being by the end of the two-week window. But the stronger signal appeared in the follow-up data.
"We found that people that continue to use the app, the ones that sustained its practice, had actually even bigger changes in their pre-study scores to their post-study scores," says Klemanski — with lower anxiety and higher overall well-being than those who stopped after the trial.
Motivation also shifted. Participants who started with low enthusiasm often ended with more.
"We did find that some of those people who are like, ‘I'm kind of motivated, but I'm more just here for the interesting part of the study,’ they actually developed some motivation along the way after doing the app," he says.
He draws an analogy to dieting: when people begin to see results, they find reasons to keep going.
Mindfulness toolbox for workers
At Ardene, new employees encounter the mindfulness program before their first shift. Onboarding includes four short lessons covering what mindfulness is, how it can benefit them, and how it works: that rewiring the brain happens through quick, consistent practice.
In-store, teams have access to a physical mindfulness box — a collection of practice cards sorted by category, covering individual and group options, physical and reflective approaches, breathwork, self-reflection, and gratitude exercises. One side of each card describes the practice; the other describes its potential benefit.
"They basically pick the one that they feel they need at the moment," says Lamoureux.
“It’s giving them a choice and acknowledging that everybody's different, everybody will need something different in the moment. And here's the library you can pick from."
Lamoureux applies that logic to herself.
"When I'm very, very stressed, a breathing exercise is good for me, but physical too — I need to stand up, stretch. The tension release is one that I love,” she says, unlike meditation or gratitude.
Each October, Ardene runs a company-wide mindfulness challenge, redesigned every year to drive discovery. Last year it was a team bingo, with employees working together to fill rows by completing different practices.
“It’s not only about pushing the initiative, but it's also helping employees discover what works for them because everybody is different,” says Lamoureux.
Survey data collected twice a year shows the program is stretching into employees' personal lives. Employees also report higher camaraderie across stores — an outcome she ties directly to lower interpersonal tension.
Lamoureux is candid, however, that it takes constant effort to maintain the program because of employee turnover and some managers who may not be big believers: "We know that the managers have a big impact on their people."
'One more tool for the repertoire'
Of course, mindfulness should not be considered a solution for issues of burnout or overwork — those are separate problems to be addressed. For mindfulness to truly work, Klemanski says timing is important.
"I want to teach people that doing this stuff in advance of those moments is what really matters. It's more about mitigation by developing a healthy lifestyle that sets you up for resilience rather than reacting.”
If someone is in the middle of an emotional storm and having a really tough day, that's not the day to learn, he says. "The day to learn mindfulness is another day when your mindset is a better space so that you can employ it when you need to."
Klemanski also says the app can be used as a bridge or a buffer to learn the skills so that when it comes time to dive deeper or talk with a therapist or counselor, people have the skills in place “to manage anxiety when it pops up in a much more intensive way," he says.
"I always think about pairing it rather than saying it's separate. It's just one more tool to add to the repertoire of tools that people have, rather than assume that this is a one-size-fits-all curative thing."
The Caravan study is currently being prepared for publication. A follow-up is planned with a larger and more diverse sample — the current study skewed toward women and white participants — and with a longer intervention window of up to four months, to better understand how sustained practice shapes outcomes over time, says Klemanski.
